~ A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you … John 13:34

Rocks and hard places (1)

Those who say that history repeats itself may have historians in mind when they do so, for it is certainly true of them; but history does not. As the ancients held, no man can step in the same stream twice. Some of the things which afflict the modern Church may well have parallels with the past. So, Bishop Schneider can tell us we are in the fourth great crisis since the Arian dispute rent the Church, whilst not disagreeing, I would suggest we are in a unique one, and that it is shared by other Christians. There is nothing new, or unique, in the challenge from islam; but since the 1770s Europe has not felt it, worried about it, or made preparation to deal with it. The tide of conquest which began when Mohammed and his armies erupted from the desert in the middle of the seventh century, was finally stemmed in 1688 at the gates of Vienna, and since then has ebbed away. The abolition of the Caliphate in 1923 passed with little acknowledgement in the West, and any commotion in the Islamic world was ignored by most. Europe was in the ascendant, and in as far as ‘Mohammedanism’ was considered, it was generally looked upon in the West as a backward faith which, with the advance of education and civilisation, would fade from view; Ataturk assumed as much when he made Turkey secular republic and adopted non-Arabic script. A century on, we can see how ell that worked; in fact, that whole set of Orientalist assumptions now looks very poor prophecy. In part this is due to the ability of the Western world to destabilise its own civilisation with two world wars and the Cold War; in part to the effect of petro-dollars on the world’s economy and the Middle East; and in part, it is down to the fact that the one defining feature onto which inhabitants of that region could cling as a bulwark against Westernisation has been their religion. Islam has proved itself far more resilient in this respect than has Christianity. The novel feature for our times is one which does have some parallels with early Christianity, but they are not encouraging. We know that early Christianity’s spread was greatly helped by the presence in many Roman cities of Jewish communities, who proved the catalyst for the conversion of the Gentiles. The West has many Muslim communities which, even if they do not (at the moment) convert many Westerners, will continue to prove unassimilable. The challenge of Islam is internal and external.

Christianity cannot focus upon this challenge for two reasons: the first is that, committed as they are to ecumenical dialogue, the leaders of the churches do not have a language of apologetics with which to debate Muslim scholars; they fear, and surely correctly, that they might be accused of Islamophobia; they want, rightly, to coexist with another of the world’s great religions; unfortunately they lack the ability to deal with those sections of Islam who rejoice in Islamophobia because they see in it a sign of fear, and who do not want to coexist with any other religions because they believe that error has no rights. A relativist mindset finds itself at a disadvantage when trying to comprehend conservative Islam. If a resurgent Islam is part of the problem, Christianity has another – the society in the West in which it finds itself embedded. Here, too, there is something novel.

Well it isn’t as if the Church hasn’t survived some really bad Popes in the past – so we’ll make it through. A good time to be vigilant and cling to the Truths of the faith and like the good Bishop reminds us to embrace our Eucharistic Faith.

I see now. I read enough to take the ravings of disgruntled ex-priest (the corruption of the best is the worst) and his ‘expose’ of the Faith. The libraries are filled with millions of books from good Catholics and the short stack of degenerate apostates are the only one’s Bosco will believe and I doubt that 100,000 favorable recollections and descriptions by priests in communion with the Church will convince him that a single apostate was lying. No. it is the 100,000 that are in error and the 1 heretic that is considered the expert. Typical of Bosco and his sort, really.

Why We Should Call Ourselves Christians: The Religious Roots of Free Societies
by Marcello Pera

Amazon blurb:-
The intellectual and political elite of the West is nowadays taking for granted that religion, in particular Christianity, is a cultural vestige, a primitive form of knowledge, a consolation for the poor minded, an obstacle to coexistence. In all influential environments, the widespread watchword is “We are all secular” or “We are all post-religious.” As a consequence, we are told that states must be independent of religious creed, politics must take a neutral stance regarding religious values, and societies must hold together without any reference to religious bonds. Liberalism, which in some form or another is the prevailing view in the West, is considered to be “free-standing,” and the Western, liberal, open society is taken to be “self-sufficient.”

Not only is anti-Christian secularism wrong, it is also risky. It’s wrong because the very ideas on which liberal societies are based and in terms of which they can be justified—the concept of the dignity of the human person, the moral priority of the individual, the view that man is a “crooked timber” inclined to prevarication, the limited confidence in the power of the state to render him virtuous—are typical Christian or, more precisely, Judeo-Christian ideas. Take them away and the open society will collapse. Anti-Christian secularism is risky because it jeopardizes the identity of the West, leaves it with no self-conscience, and deprives people of their sense of belonging. The Founding Fathers of America, as well as major intellectual European figures such as Locke, Kant, and Tocqueville, knew how much our civilization depends on Christianity. Today, American and European culture is shaking the pillars of that civilization.

Written from a secular and liberal, but not anti-Christian, point of view, this book explains why the Christian culture is still the best antidote to the crisis and decline of the West. Pera proposes that we should call ourselves Christians if we want to maintain our liberal freedoms, to embark on such projects as the political unification of Europe as well as the special relationship between Europe and America, and to avoid the relativistic trend that affects our public ethics. “The challenges of our particular historical moment”, as Pope Benedict XVI calls them in the Preface to the book, can be faced only if we stress the historical and conceptual link between Christianity and free society.

Reader comment:-
George Orwell, presumably in his later years, wrote (approximately), “We spent a couple of decades sawing off the branch we were sitting on, and when it broke and we fell to earth, we were astonished to discover that we had not fallen into a bed of roses, but into a nightmare of barbed wire, tyranny, machine guns and torture.”

This book explains, in clear language, the dilemma faced by our modern atheist progressives. When the Founding Fathers wrote of our fundamental rights (to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness), they stated that men were endowed by their Creator with these rights. That is to say, God endowed each of us with these fundamental rights, and they were not to be altered or taken away by any sort of human proceedings — not voting, not revolution, not tyranny, and not machine guns.

Christianity is not in danger of extinction. That’s not because we Christians are doing such a great job of promoting our faith but because we serve a God who promised He would build His church.
Now as to ecumenism that embraces Islam as an equal faith that is folly. Christ is the only rock and any attempt to legitimize another undermines the faith of the legitimizer leaving that one separated from the source of life.
Let Christ and Christ alone be our heart’s cry!

Trying to be a man who pleases God<br>“Nothing is more certain, than that our manners, our civilization, and all the good things . . . in this European world of ours, depended for ages upon two principles: and were indeed the result of both combined; I mean the spirit of the gentleman, and the spirit of religion” (Burke)